Today Jim Gor­don sent out a new email to the Acme Secu­rity System’s Delos crowd:

OK friend, you’re up to bat now. You have your­self a new assign­ment: Oper­a­tion Slipknot.

Link­ing to a new Gotham Major Crimes Unit page ded­i­cated to “Oper­a­tion Slip­knot”.

Click­ing each of the police images reveals details about the indi­vid­u­als. The assign­ment states,

OPERATION SLIPKNOT

Gotham Police Major Crimes Unit, in coöper­a­tion with the GPD Inter­nal Affairs Divi­sion, needs you to help track down numer­ous offend­ers that are fugi­tives from jus­tice. Inter­est­ingly, we’ve tracked all of these indi­vid­u­als to the same last known loca­tion: Gotham Inter­con­ti­nen­tal Hotel. But we don’t know where they’ve gone from there.

Call the hotel and con­vince the concierge to ship you a cer­tain pack­age that’s been sent there for each fugi­tive. Use the pro­vided intel and what­ever means you can to con­vince him that you’re the intended recip­i­ent, your travel plans have changed, and he needs to send the pack­age to you. Once received, you should have all you need to fill in the blanks as to that fugitive’s location.

We will add details about addi­tional fugi­tives as they become avail­able. Time is of the essence, as we have only a short time before the trail runs cold. Your coöper­a­tion in this oper­a­tion will go a long way. Good luck.

Head­ing over to the Gotham Inter­con­ti­nen­tal Hotel, we are pre­sented with a tele­phone num­ber to call their concierge — 1 866 306 5589.

The aim is to state that you are the offi­cer and pro­vide your ref­er­ence num­ber — as out­lined by the INTEL:

You should have received your dupli­cate care pack­ages by now. If not, con­tact the concierge at the Inter­con­ti­nen­tal and have him for­ward you your orig­i­nal pack­age (ref­er­ence #‘s, as always, the total num­ber of let­ters in your name fol­lowed by your last name shifted for­ward one let­ter, like 15DBOEPMPSP). He’s been instructed to send no-questions-asked if these ref #‘s are used. Do NOT con­tact me.

Bön Voy­age!

Then you must state that your travel arrange­ments have had to change, the concierge shall ask for a mail­ing address and then con­firm that a pack­age shall be sent out to that address overnight. You also need to pro­vide a tele­phone num­ber in case of prob­lems. The phone lines are VERY BUSY and new fugi­tives are being added regularly

When you get your pack­age, their is a sub­mit but­ton to pro­vide the rel­e­vant details and turn them in:

If you have received a pack­age, enter any per­ti­nent intel on your sub­ject here: the con­fir­ma­tion # of their ticket, the last name of the alias they’re trav­el­ing under, and the city they’re fly­ing to. If every­thing checks out, we’ll for­ward it so that appro­pri­ate action can be taken.

Thanks Bruce, Maeghan and Carlos!

Update: All fugi­tives have been assigned and pack­ages sent out. The game has gone quiet until tomor­row morn­ing, when I’m sure it will return with more surprises!

Clowns Against Dent are back with a new video, Har­vey Dent believes in two things, Crime and Cor­rup­tion. The date, 7/2/08 is now seen in card form.

Thanks Bryan and Keith!

This is a very large, though side inves­ti­ga­tion tak­ing place as part of the Dark Knight’s viral mar­ket­ing. A lot of inter­est­ing details, doc­u­ments and images have been unveiled as a result of this sleuthing, so I’m going to do my best to relay all of this to you now.

Back­ground on Francis

Fran­cis Notoro is a Gotham police offi­cer that appears on the “Con­cerned Cit­i­zens for a Bet­ter Gotham” web­site, one of the eight that damned Har­vey Dent in a press conference:

Eight Gotham police offi­cers stood up for the truth today at a morn­ing press con­fer­ence at Gotham’s Hotel Inter­na­tionale. One by one, the police offi­cers took the podium and told their story. Their dev­as­tat­ing tes­ti­mony showed that Dent is a dis­hon­est, cor­rupt, out-of-control pros­e­cu­tor who threat­ened police offi­cers in order to get them to tes­tify against inno­cent cops who Dent wanted in jail. Fran­cis Notaro, Sergeant, told the press corps that Dent had offered him money to tes­tify against an inno­cent cop, Jimmy Scaliano.

He cur­rently fea­tures in CCFABG’s lat­est adver­tise­ment: CCFABG Ad

And update to the Gotham Police web­site, award­ing him the Gotham Medal of Com­men­da­tion:

At a cer­e­mony in City Hall’s Ban­quet Room yes­ter­day, Gotham Police Depart­ment Sgt. Fran­cis X. Notaro received the Gotham Medal of Com­men­da­tion. It is the high­est medal one can receive from the Mayor of Gotham, and requires “an extra­or­di­nary act of courage in the face of real dan­ger to one’s self.” Mayor Gar­cia as well as numer­ous other dig­ni­taries were there to honor Sgt. Notaro, who was accom­pa­nied to the event by his wife Han­nah and his two chil­dren, Samuel, 7, and Rachel, 4.

The com­men­da­tion emerged from Sgt. Notaro’s actions of May 13 of last year. A crazed gun­man began shoot­ing up passers-by in an alley down­town off of Jack­son and Colum­bus at around 2 AM.

Notaro, who was not on duty at that hour but hap­pened to be close by, heard the shots, went straight to the scene of the inci­dent, and shot and killed the per­pe­tra­tor. Notaro’s actions put him­self at grave risk of death, while sav­ing the lives of inno­cent bystanders.

“Sgt. Notaro reflects the very best of Gotham,” said Mayor Gar­cia. “He rep­re­sents the spirit of ded­i­ca­tion, duty, and com­mit­ment to the rule of law that we all can admire.”

The Fan Inves­ti­ga­tion and Mystery

“jlevine”

All the infor­ma­tion posted so far is read­ily avail­able on the viral sites. Here is where the jour­ney really begins. Look­ing at the updated Gotham Police page, the pic­ture of Frank Notaro used asks not to be hotlinked — this begs us to look at the URL:

the​gotham​times​.com/​m​e​d​i​a​/​j​l​e​v​i​n​e​/​p​u​b​l​i​c​/​g​t​p​0​0​3​3​9​.​jpg

By incre­ment­ing the num­ber on the image we can find a few more pic­tures of Frank with his chil­dren. The name in the URL, ‘jlevine’ refers to one James Levine, cited in The Maiden Avenue Report:

TIMES REPORTER LEVINE: “MEDIA PACKRAT” PREPPING EXCLUSIVE NOTAROINTERVIEW?

Using the known folder and try­ing some dif­fer­ent file names, this inter­view is uncov­ered: Down­load, here’s an excerpt:

Notaro: Har­vey Dent offered me cash money to lie about a good cop.
Levine: Yep, that’s what the ad says.
Notaro: Cash money. To lie.
Levine: What cop was he try­ing to pros­e­cute?
Notaro: James Scaliano.
Levine: Scaliano, Scaliano…Ahh, Scaliano, this is the guy who was found guilty of shak­ing down shop own­ers for pro­tec­tion money and roughin’ up guys for the shy­locks.
Notaro: Lies. All lies. Scaliano was a good man.

Voice­mail Messages

Mov­ing swiftly on, hope you are with us so far. Onto a site we uncov­ered a short while ago, that of CCFABG leader Joseph (aka Joe) Can­do­loro. On this page is a tele­phone num­ber, 1866 626 8049, com­bin­ing it with the price of “Joe’s favourite” at Rossi’s deli (1149), yields voicemail.

Joe’s Favorite
An 8oz sir­loin cooked to order and 3 fan­tail shrimp, breaded and fried. $11.49

The first mes­sage we hear is a lit­tle gem from Albert Rossi which reveals a secure doc­u­ment num­ber, IA176495U (“killed by the men upstairs”) and he leaves his num­ber at the end of the mes­sage, 1866 580 3840. Use the pin “9482” to access his voice­mail — these let­ters cor­re­spond to his mother’s name Zita (we found this out at St Swith­uns). Using this a series of voice mes­sages were uncov­ered. These mes­sages reveal the secret sto­ries of three char­ac­ters — Can­do­loro, Rossi and Notaro. Within a mes­sage to Rossi, Notaro reveals his num­ber to be 1866 626 608 3515. Com­bin­ing this with his date of birth as a pin (32976 — aka 3/29/76) we get access to another phone and set of messages.

Down­load Pack of all MP3 Voicemails

Secure Inter­nal Documents

Now onto the real nitty gritty. Every­thing so far has been triv­ial. For those that didn’t know, the Gotham Police web­site has a secret login page at this loca­tion. Back in Decem­ber we used this to retrieve some secret doc­u­ments. We login using user­name: Barhyte­Glenn, pass­word: tevre­den­heid,

By sub­mit­ting Frank’s name to the We Are The Answer web­site, you get this email response,

Thank you for your sub­mis­sion. Offi­cer Fran­cis Notaro is cur­rently being inves­ti­gated to deter­mine his guilt or innocence.

We Are The Answer will keep the cit­i­zens of Gotham informed regard­ing this, and other, inves­ti­ga­tions of police officers.

UmVmOg0KSUE4MjM0OTcxDQpJQTgzNzYxMjENCklBODM4ODU1NQ0KDQo=

That code at the end is very intrigu­ing. It turns out that it is Base64 encoded, decod­ing this gives us three doc­u­ment num­bers, IA823497, IA8376121, IA8388555.

Log­ging into the secure doc­u­ments page and enter­ing the num­ber from Rossi’s voice­mail reveals the offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tion into the use of deadly force by Franci Notaro — this shows that his story has incon­sis­ten­cies. The doc­u­ment has since been removed from the archives (as per the voice message).

Next up we have the first of the Inter­nal Affairs num­bers, which gives us a wire­tap record­ing between Rossi and Notaro which reveals details of a cover up, regard­ing the events that led to Notaro’s commendation.

Down­load Wire­tap MP3

The sec­ond of the encrypted doc­u­ments is Notaro’s Bank state­ment. Note the $10,000 deposits from JC, believed to be Mr Candoloro.

Last but not least, there is some DNA evi­dence from the crime scene:

These sam­ples prove the victim’s innocence.

Many many thanks to the mem­bers at Super­Hero­Hype

I have just been con­tacted by Brian, a lucky par­tic­i­pant of the bowl­ing ball mar­ket­ing cam­paign — though his cir­cum­stances have taken a turn for the worse and he now wishes to sell his beloved prize.

Sorry to propo­si­tion you like this but you were a big pro­po­nent of me being the first to grab the DARK KNIGHT April 1st Viral cam­paign pack­age and I just was won­der­ing if you could send a post for me.

The end of last week I had ter­ri­ble fam­ily emer­gency and we’re going to need all the help we can get money wise. So I decided to Ebay my Dark Knight pack­age. I saw the last one go for $11,520 and if we could get any­where close to that, it’d be an amaz­ing help to my fam­ily. It’s always hard giv­ing out mem­o­ri­bilia that you win, but I know there were a ton of peo­ple inter­ested if there’s just one who has the money to spend it’d change lives. So please, think about it post­ing, if not there’s no hard feel­ings. I left the ebay page as my web­site. Thanks, again.

The Ebay Auction

This is the text from the ebay listing:

On April Fool’s we all watched as one by one the loca­tions were stamped! This is an offi­cial Dark Knight Viral Bowl­ing Pack­age. This was taken from Glen­dale NY at exactly 11:27 April 1st, 2008. It’s an amaz­ing pack­age and I’m being torn asun­der by friends and loved ones to Ebay this awe­some movie tie-in.

The Full Contents

Brown Bowl­ing Bag (in which all the con­tents were found within)

Green and Pur­ple Bowl­ing Ball — Now, the ball holes are large for a good sized hand, I was expect­ing some throw away kids ball or even a fake bowl­ing ball, but this is the real deal. Not only is it a great ball, but it is cus­tomized with your “clown thug” name and the phone num­ber you were sup­posed to call when you picked up the package.

Evi­dence Bag — Another touch of genius the rest of the good­ies were wrapped in an evi­dence bag sealed, no joker face paint though…

Cell Phone — It’s a pretty nice Nokia that has been pre­paid and was used to report you’d received the ball.

Note — From the head clown himself…

Joker Card — This really is the jewel in the crown if you will, these joker cards are beau­ti­ful and creepy at the same time. I’m pretty sure everyone’s get­ting a dif­fer­ent one but mine has an anti­quated feel that just makes it perfect.

PLEASE, bid respon­si­bly. I’m only let­ting this go because of some bad breaks and the price tag reflects me not want­ing to part with the pack­age, I will be happy to keep this, but I know there are those of you who want it more than me, some of you might even deserve it more.

Good luck, and I’ll see you all July 18th…

This new viral site links in with the Acme Secu­rity Sys­tems mes­sage where the Gotham Police Major Crimes Unit was unveiled with logo. The URL was dis­cov­ered very close to the time but the site hadn’t gone live, today it has:

GPDMCU: www​.gpdmcu​.com

The site lists a con­tact email address (which was orig­i­nally incor­rectly point­ing to a .org address), contact@​gpdmcu.​com.

The Clown Travel Agency prize has been unveiled, it is a link to Acme Secu­rity Sys­tems, a page with the descrip­tion of “delos”:

www​.acmese​cu​ri​tysys​tems​.com/​d​e​los

The aim is to deac­ti­vate a par­tic­u­lar secu­rity sys­tem, and the pass­word is “Nee­dle”.

Enter­ing your tele­phone leads them to call you with an auto­mated mes­sage, on answer­ing you need to clearly state “Nee­dle” as the pass­word. Say­ing “Hello” fails the pass­word check. You’ll then be greeted by a fel­low (Gor­don) from Gotham Police Depart­ment stat­ing that your iden­tity has been cap­tured and that you “work for us now”. It is a very excit­ing and inter­est­ing phone call if you get it to go through.

Mean­ings to the num­bers in the Iden­tity Cap­tured image — they are charges:
156.05 Unau­tho­rized use of a com­puter.
156.10 Com­puter tres­pass.
156.27 Com­puter tam­per­ing in the first degree.
156.35 Crim­i­nal pos­ses­sion of com­puter related mate­r­ial.
(thanks gilga)

Down­load Audio Record­ing of the Phone Call

(thanks to BANEpark­our)

Tele­phone Transcript:

Woman: Hello, this is the Acme Secu­rity Sys­tems voice print iden­ti­fi­ca­tion sys­tem, please say the pass­word clearly.

Caller: NEEDLE

Gor­don: This is Jim Gor­don, major crimes, Gotham Police Depart­ment. Not the voice you were expect­ing… huh? We have your name. We have your num­ber. We have your computer’s IP address. So what I’m say­ing is, we have you. Con­sider your­self the Gotham Police Department’s newest recruit. You see, this works one of two ways, either you’re going to jail for con­spir­acy in a crim­i­nal enter­prise, or, you’ll work for me. We’ll be in touch. Oh, have a great day!

All pack­ages have been uncov­ered! Now time to head over to Acme Secu­rity Sys­tems or con­tinue fol­low­ing our coverage

As expected, The Clown Travel Agency viral puz­zle has come online — this time they have gone inter­na­tional. By click­ing on the manilla enve­lope (donned with the text “Proud Mother” in the bot­tom right) a sheet of loca­tions is revealed — from Paris to Sao Paolo. At each of these loca­tions is a package.

The text reads:

“Ready to have a ball?
A spe­cial bag of fun awaits the first to claim it. But you bet­ter strike fast, there’s no time to spare”

The mes­sage hints at the sport of Ten Pin Bowl­ing, and this mes­sage from Alex at SHH con­firms that:

I con­tacted the Tavi­s­tock Hotel, but I was too late, how­ever they gave me some info on the pack­age. Some­one col­lected it and inside was a bowl­ing ball, and a nifty smart mobile phone. On the ball was a mobile phone num­ber etched on it. He rang the num­ber apa­prently and was told they now knew who he was and to await fur­ther instructions.

The folks over at SHH and Omelette have posted their pic­tures of the packages.

The note that came with it reads:

“Nice work, clown! Now call the num­ber on the ball imme­di­ately, from this phone and THIS PHONE ONLY. Don’t give this num­ber to any­one else, or I’ll know.

Hope­fully, your cohorts will be in the same league as you, because once all your points are racked up, I’ll give you all some­thing that will really bowl you over…”

A bowl­ing ball, a joker card, a phone, a mes­sage and a bag for the lot.

I thought I would split out the Har­vey Dent related viral news to a new post, save every­thing from get­ting too con­gested as the news keeps com­ing. It seems that those signed up to par­tic­i­pate in the cam­paign have started to receive their rewards in the post,

SHH User Anita18 received a Gotham City voter’s card in the post:

Oth­ers have received the lat­est issue of The Gotham Times. A lucky few have also had some inter­est­ing Har­vey Dent pro­mo­tion but­tons, with one side melted or burnt away (alas Two Face) — sent via the Con­cerned Cit­i­zens For A Bet­ter Gotham (pic­tures thanks to Marvel152):